A number of people still haven't gotten the memo that Daily Kos is a partisan Democratic website whose purpose is the improvement of American politics, so I thought I would post a little reality check. As an educational aid, I would therefore like to provide a remedial tutorial on the difference between the criticism of a conscientious citizen and the reckless contempt of a selfish idiot trying to stroke their ego at the expense of their own alleged values.
That which distinguishes a progressive from a conservative or atavist is our desire that others prosper when we do - our wish, in other words, that all human beings have the same opportunities we want for ourselves. This stems from that precious human gift of empathy: The basic recognition that we are connected to each other and similar in nature. And so, when a progressive acquires or is born into wealth, they feel obliged to broaden its benefits beyond themselves and their immediate community, understanding that their privilege carries obligations. They view people who lack their wealth as basically themselves, only deprived of either an opportunity, a skill, or a talent, none of which reflects poorly on a person's value as a human being.
This is very different from the attitude of conservatives/atavists. When one of them becomes wealthy or is born into wealth, they view it as a mark of intrinsic distinction - a divine seal of approval carrying implicit superiority and elevating their basest desires above philosophical moral considerations. In their eyes, people without their wealth are not like them at all - they are inferior beings or even subhuman, and their entire existence carries less moral value in the eyes of the conservative/atavist than that of an economic equal. They do not want to share their wealth or the opportunities it brings, because they consider its retention and growth the definition of their inherent worthiness. All of which is a verbose way of saying they are selfish and petty.
Now, right-wing mentalities do not necessarily recognize this about themselves - such would require a level of honesty and reflection that simply isn't compatible with their nature. Many sincerely believe themselves to be benevolent and generous, and act according to what they think is the best way to produce a happy, prosperous society - namely, "putting people in their place" and denying "inferior" groups the "disruptive" hope of social mobility.
They do this by expressing their contempt for and animosity toward members of those groups who excel beyond the bounds of stereotype - i.e., who prove them wrong. So the right's "dialogue" with its victims is a monotonous drone of condemnation, ridicule, and lies - or at the very best, patronizing condescension - because the entire purpose of it is debasement of the target and aggrandizement of the speaker, even if the speaker does so unconsciously.
Contrast that with how wealthy progressives address disadvantaged groups: By recognizing the commonality of human beings, examining their own fortunes with humility, and appreciating the complexities and obstacles facing other people. In other words, they do not believe they can badger other people into doing better - no "get a job, you lazy bums!" - because they know poverty is rarely a choice, and have no desire to degrade people who already suffer. Ideally, progressives also try to avoid being patronizing or condescending to people we would help - we're trying to create a better world for people because we're people, not because we have a need to be Santa Claus. Instead, we engage them as people in collaborative efforts at mutual improvement of society.
Now consider that intelligence and moral clarity are a form of wealth. They enrich our lives, provide additional opportunities, and make us powerful even when we hold no explicit authority because we are self-possessed and aware. So how do you distribute the benefit of your intellect and political values?
Do you behave as a progressive, seeing the connections between yourself and those you address and seeking to build for the future, or do you behave as a conservative/atavist, putting people in their place and tearing things down around you in order to feel morally and intellectually superior? Do you address society's ills in order to solve them or to wallow in them? Do you care to what extent your own attitudes and actions are part of the problem, or is your role simply to censure society and wait for the world to correct itself in response your wise tutelage?
We find both types in the community of people describing themselves as "progressives," and yet in reality one of them is more fundamentally kindred to the conservative/atavist frame of mind than to the progressive. The conservatives who get their ego jollies wallowing in empty jingoism and fascist groupthink are the familiar kind, but I see no reason we can't posit another who finds more satisfaction in gleefully defaming their own supposed in-group in order to feel superior to everyone around them. Both conservative frames are products of narcissism, both use the defamation of entire identities in order to aggrandize themselves, and both are grotesquely mendacious in the face of complicating facts.
Nowhere is the divergence so starkly illustrated as the attitude toward the United States. I think I speak for the consensus of progressives when I say that America is not only better than the Republican Party, but its national values irreconcilable with the GOP agenda. Even where voters are hideously right-wing, we recognize that in most cases it stems from socioeconomic failures, lack of education, and the persistent domination of entrenched interests in the region - not from the people in those areas being fundamentally degenerate.
But there are commenters - little more than volunteer pundits who participate seemingly out of the sheer joy of being dipshits - for whom this reality is not only obscured, but practically irrelevant: When the US elects leaders or enacts policies inimical to both its interests and values, they do not ask "How did the system fail Americans this way?" Instead they say things like "Wow, Americans are dumb!" They say "We get what we deserve!" Or ask "WTF is wrong with this country?!?!"
People who respond like this are totally divorced from their own involvement in what they're watching, and behave like movie critics rather than citizens. They see elections and major political developments as opportunities to sit in judgment of their countrymen rather than a chance to participate and do what they can to improve their country. Politics is just another reality TV show to them - a circus for their amusement or titillation, where "their" country (theirs in the sense of property, rather than personal association) must parade past their throne and be met with either gracious approval or stern reprimand.
Pretty much all that differentiates their attitude from that of the right is their taste in governments, not what they actually stand for. When things go their way, they take credit for it and wallow in how awesome they are - as if they personally made it happen - and when things don't go their way, they condemn the whole damn country (other than themselves, of course) as if every other American made it happen because we're evil, cretinous bastards who are unworthy of being in their sight. And what's truly galling is that oftentimes there is no reality to their portrayal of either case - the difference between proclaiming themselves an American hero from the rooftops or savagely denouncing the United States as a festering hellhole full of Gollum clones can be as little as an unsourced rumor posted in the comments of a blog article.
Going back to the central point, I think the United States uniquely attracts such hatred due to the phenomenon I mentioned earlier: The conservative/atavist mind sees it as a moral imperative to denigrate "inferiors" who have risen above their "proper station." To prove a stereotype wrong by being better than it is immoral from the right-wing perspective - e.g., a black President, a rich liberal, a post-racial Southerner, etc., are all things that seem to drive conservatives especially crazy. So we see that any challenge to hierarchy, whether from above or below, is considered a violation: Rich people who reject the idea of their own inherent supremacy are abhorred as equally as poor people who demand opportunities.
Apropos, we have the United States of America - the least imperial so-called "empire" in history, that has objectively been the most potent global influence for democracy and human rights of any other country in spite of foreign policies that either damaged or underserved them in specific cases. We continue to have the most innovative businesses, in spite of economic hemorrhaging to China, poor education, aging infrastructure, and weak government commitment to technological progress. In other words, we are a country that staunchly refuses to be defined by our circumstances: We are the black President, the rich liberal, the post-racial Southerner, the poor ghetto kid who loves to read Henry David Thoreau and listen to Velvet Underground, etc.
But for some reason, some people just don't want to hear that. It isn't relevant to them that what they're saying isn't true, or paints a picture with untrue implications - the main concern is making a witty bon mot, or making the most emotionally impactful statement even if in the broadest perspective it's less helpful.
For instance, I've noticed in the Egypt threads a recurring focus on American support of the Mubarak regime, and in particular with the image of a tear gas canister saying "Made in America." These comments typically receive a large number of Recs, and so far I've been the only one (that I've seen) who answers these comments with the fact that Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube - which have been integral to the genesis of the Arab revolution and the world's knowledge thereof - are products of American ingenuity and commitment to open communication.
The amount of taxpayer money alone (not including private US investment) that directly or indirectly helps support these products/services, in addition to all the research that went into their creation, easily dwarfs every penny ever spent supporting Egyptian dictators - something only undertaken in the first place to uphold the Camp David accords that have saved an unknowable number of lives over decades. So whatever one's views of what could have been done better, the portrayal - or implication - of American foreign policy as a general conspiracy to crush freedom or incite violence is ludicrous on its face. But this is just one specific example in an endless litany of areas where some people have made up their own reality, and attack a fictitious, context-free, alternate-history punching bag in order to feel like the "lone voice of reason in the wilderness" or whatever fantasy they have of themselves.
Just to be clear, I am not speaking for the most part about people who have merely noted the problems of American foreign policy, but rather people who extract from that criticism an excuse to demonize our country. I wonder if these people treat their children, brothers, sisters, parents, friends, and coworkers the way they treat their country in the abstract? Are you the sort of people who, seeing your son or daughter making a bad choice, scream in their face "What's wrong with you?!? Are you a fucking moron?!?!" Is that your school of parenting? If a coworker goes about doing something the wrong way, do you loudly ridicule and defame their character, or do you barely manage to restrain yourself from being an asshole in order to keep getting paychecks? Even more to the point, if you see a flawed coworker who responds to their problems by working even harder start to get ahead of you, do you respond with fury and resentment, and become obsessed with monotonously harping on and exaggerating those flaws in order to feel better about yourself? Do you say "How dare you get promoted ahead of me! The only reason you work harder than me is that you're a recovering alcoholic, whereas I don't have to because I'm not!" America is just people, and when you trash it, you trash all of us.
When you categorize Americans as stupid, vile, ignorant, violent, etc. you are not merely making a generalization - you are lying. You are inventing a narrative based on your own ignorance and vain desire to feel superior to the rest of society. You are devaluing the entire country and everyone in it in order to compliment yourself on how far above your environment you've supposedly risen (which is obviously not very far, if at all). An intelligent, progressive person may cite statistics about what Americans know to indicate the poor state of education, but they are not going to use that as an opportunity to denigrate the United States as a society of dumb pigs.
We may examine the mechanisms by which innate human violence is not as effectively defrayed in our society as it is in others, but intelligent, responsible people do not condemn Americans as bloodthirsty savages. And if you are of the firm belief that this country is fundamentally corrupt and evil, then you should be somewhere else both physically and in terms of websites, because once again, the purpose of this one is the improvement of American politics. IMPROVEMENT, not further derangement. So if your "contributions" are routinely along the lines described above, you are part of the problem.
Here is a brief tutorial on the difference between constructive, responsible criticism and what I call the "Greenwald Method" that epitomizes the attitudes described above:
- Situation: Your 5-year-old has broken something in a tantrum.
Constructive: Get them to admit breaking it and have them clean it up.
Greenwald Method: Shriek in their face that they are a stupid, mean, ugly runt, make them eat the shards of the broken thing, and insist they apologize for being born.
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- Situation: A coworker has bungled an important team project, compromising your work.
Constructive: Find out what happened, the circumstances surrounding it, and counsel your coworker on avoiding the problem in the future. If you or other teammates contributed to the problem, figure how you can avoid repeating the same mistakes in the future. Your feelings are your own, but your words affect the team.
Greenwald Method: Before knowing anything other than the fact that someone else has made your life more difficult, begin screaming at your coworker, call them an incompetent hack unworthy of oxygen, and punctuate your threats to throw them off a bridge with repeated calumnies against their parentage.
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- Situation: In order to uphold the Camp David peace accords between bitter enemies Egypt and Israel, your country has supplied the Egyptian dictatorship with decades of aid, some of which has been used to suppress democracy activists. It now appears that democracy has the general support of the Egyptian people and the regime has lost it.
Constructive: Advocate that the US government change its official disposition to strongly disfavor any Egyptian government policy that does not produce free, fair elections in a timely manner and make continued support contingent on a democratic system.
Greenwald Method: Condemn the United States as the author of the Mubarak regime's predations on the Egyptian people, totally ignore context or rational proportion, totally ignore all American contributions both political and technological to the current uprising, rail against every step forward as a failure to reach the finish line, and bash Americans as imperialist trash both for not taking a harder line on Mubarak ("propping up a puppet dictator") or for being too specific in supporting democracy ("trying to hijack the Egyptian people's revolution").
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Hopefully the lessons of the above tutorial are clear and helpful, because I can't imagine how to help anyone who sees them as ambiguous. Now, just to preempt any WATB remarks that maybe forthcoming, please understand you do not get to complain about being unfairly represented if you go around demonizing Americans on a website whose purpose is the improvement of American politics. So, as a little experiment, if you intend on posting an angrily condemnatory comment against this diary, please preface your remark with the word 'apple' so that I know you actually read the diary before replying, because if you fail to do so you will be a figure of fun, so fair warning on that account.
Finally, I realize calling people "egocentric idiots" in the title is not engaging or positive, but in all honesty I'm not talking to those people: Folks who are so far gone they sincerely don't see the problem with gleefully trashing an entire country on a website dedicated to its improvement would not understand productive engagement anyway, and would probably see it as a sign of weakness. Basically, I'm writing them off - which is what it means when you insult and condemn. They write off our country, and thereby its people, so I write them off as what they are - mouths that talk and say nothing.
The whole point of what we do here is that America is better than the people who prey on it, so if you believe that we are the predators; if you believe that we are willing prey; if you believe that we are scum who deserve any catastrophe or crime that befalls us; then you do not belong in this company of smart, brave people who are here to make America and the world a better place.